Compliance Toolkit

Story: RealNetworks cries foul over Microsoft antitrust case

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Stewart, you appear to missing several key pieces of information. That's fair enough though - you're an accountant, not a technical specialist. Let me enlighten you.

Microsoft have been convicted of using anticompetitive tactics and having an illegal monopoly. That removes from them several rights they would usually have, including having the "option" to bundle media player with Windows.

Let's take your points one by one:

"I am able to uninstall any application from my computer."
No, you're not. Not if you want to continue using Windows, and many people do because they've learnt it and they know it. You show me a Windows XP computer you've uninstalled Internet Explorer from and I'll show you where the fully working copy still sits.

"If I choose to use another media player other than the one supplied by Microsoft then I will."
But you won't, because you've already got the Microsoft one, right? Why should you spend time on the internet looking for and downloading a media player when you've already got one?
The problem is though, if every Windows user has Microsoft's media player, then whose media format do you think every music download service will encode their stuff in? Except now all the music you've bought is in MS format, you CAN'T use Real Player for it because it's digitally encoded only to work with media player. Suddenly you're locked in to Windows for ever. Do you like the sound of that? Just because they do no wrong now (in your eyes) doesn't mean it will be that way for ever. Flexbility, my friend, is power! You're the accountant. You tell me how much financial power Microsoft will gain when all music is delivered using their software?

This is the reason why "Real Networks are up the proverbial creek without a boat, much less a paddle." It's the reason why "Real Networks are losing advertising revenue by the day (in vast amounts of money) which, if you did your research you would know."

It's the same reason why Netscape went from being a multi-billion dollar darling of Silicon Valley to being an embarrassing subsidiary of AOL. It's not that their software wasn't good enough to compete, or that they couldn't get the sales. It's just that when people installed Windows 98, it already had Internet Explorer on. And that was good enough for most people who, had they realised they had the choice, would probably have got the market leader product (Netscape Navigator) at the time.

"Here's a thought.........Use Linux. You will find the Windows to Linux Migration Kit at http://www.linux.org/" but the fact remains that there are still a lot of applications that have no equivalent on Linux, making it impossible to use for some people. For the time being, at least, people have to use Windows.

Personally, my next computer will be a Mac.

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